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| Metropolis (1927) |
The words government" and "state" are often used interchangeably, but they are really different thing. According to the Founders' vision, the people are sovereign and the government belongs to us. Under the European nation of the state, the people are creatures of the state, significant only as parts of the whole.
This European version of the state can be nice, One can live comfortably under it. Many decent and smart people sincerely believe this is the intellectually and morally superior was to organize society. And, to be fair, it's not a binary thing. The line between the European and American models is blurry. France is not Huxleyan dystopia, and America is not and has never been an anarchist's utopia, nor do conservatives want it to be one.
The distinction between the two worldviews is easily a disagreement over first assumptions about which institutions should take the lead in our lives. It is an argument about what the habits of the American heart should be. Should we live in a country where the first recourse is to appeal to the government, or should government interventions be reserved as a last resort?
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So socialist politics are acceptable, but not the politics of a man who stood up and fought socialism.
The likelihood is that President Obama didn’t want Walesa in the White House because Walesa has made critical remarks toward the president’s policies and in 2010 warned that the United States was slipping toward socialism. But rather than taking the mature and diplomatic path and respecting Walesa’s right to have a differing perspective, Obama chose to shun his lifetime of achievements.
OTR has never been one to specialize, not since he realized he didn't want to spend the rest of his life researching 18th century frontier settlement in the Great Valley of Anywhere. Instead, he devoted his career to making broad linkages in time and space across a wonder-filled organism he called the American Experience. Of course there was theme and focus in his work, but there was also plenty of opportunity to examine the "big pictures" that make our national experiment so interesting.
OTR has a soft spot for Canada. His great aunt--she had connections-- always kept the family well-supplied with Canadian maple syrup and maple sugar candies when he was a boy. Fifty years ago, a ten day visit to Canada was his first to a "foreign" country though there wasn't much foreign about it then or now. And toward the end of his career he spent almost two weeks each year working with a tireless, enthusiastic, and hospitable crew of Canadians from federal tourism, land management, and protection agencies. They were a great group who "smuggled" OTR and his colleagues some superb Canada-only "beverages" and introduced them to several dishes including poutine, a tasty artery clogging combination of french fries, cheese curds and gravy.
OTR has offered his readers many opportunities to learn about this strategy over the last two years. One of its authors, Frances Fox Piven, has called for its use in 2011 to overload welfare systems across the nation, create a fiscal crisis, and force the national government to support a "federally guaranteed national income." OTR thinks it is fair to call Piven an experienced academic community organizer who is delighted at having a fellow organizer in the Oval Office. Readers already know that the Obama administration, according to now Chicago mayor-in-waiting, Rahm Emanuel, is not one to let a crisis go to waste. Piven knows this may be her last, best hope to put the strategy to effective use and undermine our capitalist economy.
Moonbattery 's Van Helsing posted a fine history lesson--first-rate links too--on the American welfare state, an entity that could easily be called the Democrat plantation. It begins with an ominous warning delivered by Franklin Roosevelt, the welfare state founding father, about the destructive potential of sustained dependence on government aid. The story snakes through the presidencies of Johnson, Carter and Obama, and ends with the nation teetering on the abyss where fewer and fewer taxpayers support almost half the electorate. Stepping back from that edge and a descent into a slave rebellion on the part of the producers may be difficult, but it is essential if we want to sustain the republic as we know it.
The study of economics has come a long way in the last sixty years. Some of those long, cryptic formulas we saw scratched on blackboards are beginning to spit out some reliable predictions. Some thinkers, including the biologist and theorist, E. O. Wilson, believe economics will be the key to unifying science and the humanities - see his Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998) - into a single body of understanding. That's a big leap into the future, but we don't have to wait for the future to see some predictions coming out of the minds of our best economists today. Unfortunately, the forecasts coming out these post-Keynesian thinkers don't look too promising for the United States. Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard has the details through links to a Wall Street Journal article by the economist Arthur Laffer and another by The New York Times business correspondent David Barboza. Here's your link to Gaius's "All Aboard."
Powerline has a short post by Scott Johnson that is filled with links describing the consequences of the combined impact of Obamacare and Obama-ed on the American republic. If you value your freedom, you need to read this post and links therein.
